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Comment by tuatoru | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but OP is using a word and phrase taken directly from the introduction to the article. I expect better from Stanford.edu.

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It's not a major error -- the words are etymological siblings and it's clear what was meant. Repair translates to something resembling "reparation" in most romance languages so it's an easy translation mistake to make.

I worked recently with a guy who learned all of his big words from books. Very, very old books.

It was exhausting. And English is my first language. I felt sorry for my Indian coworkers. Jesus man, stop trying to look smart and just talk like a normal person. The intelligence is in the ideas not the words used to convey them.

> Jesus man, stop trying to look smart and just talk like a normal person.

What is normal to one person may not be normal to another. Especially when someone learns a language from books without much human interaction.

When that person is in their early 20's that's a fair assessment. When that person has been in industry for 20 years, it is not.

I remember scott adams (in his heyday) saying this (use of dense or superliterary words that require extra processing) often happens when you don't have an argument and you want to divert attention from the argument to the words themselves.

Often, if you substitute the haughty words for more speedily parseable ones, you realise the argument falls apart, if there was one at all.

It might be simpler than that. Let me remind you all of how erudite I am. I am very smart, I had this idea, and I would like to share it with you, because smart people have smart ideas. Remember, I am very smart. Here’s my idea.

Some of the dumbest, or rather the most dangerous, ideas I’ve heard came from smart people. Lots of dumb ideas come from someone who isn’t in danger of bringing them to fruition. The Smart Guy is imminently in danger of doing so. Or I suppose rather that we are in imminent danger of him doing so.

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